


day of wrath

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, The Framework Universe (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 20:57:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13198422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Soft skin touches her bare back, fingers brushing down her spine. They are not a woman’s.





	day of wrath

**Author's Note:**

> You've probably noticed this is chapter one of two. I've had this finished for months but have failed to find the motivation to move on to part two so I'm posting it as is with the hopes that someday I'll finish.
> 
> To clarify those tags, this isn't a Framework that's set in the past, it's a historical AU with Framework characterizations. Hope that clears some things up.
> 
> For the Halloween prompt: mad scientist

In the confines of her own room, Jemma breathes deeply, allowing her inner turmoil to show. Here, she is free to be a _person_ instead of a pretty, wind-up automaton. Here, there are no men.

That draws a hollow laugh out of her. At present there are no men anywhere in the house, her room is no special sanctuary.

“Ophelia,” she calls, only to immediately begin undoing her laces herself rather than wait for her maid’s arrival.

There _were_ men, of course, why else would Jemma’s chest still be tight with an evening’s worth of impotent rage? But Dr. Fitz received an urgent missive during the second course and suddenly the whole room was in motion, every man in it—meaning everyone but Jemma because it doesn’t occur to any of them that she might like someone to speak to while in the wilds of Scotland—in a rush to be out and away. Gone to hunt … something? Someone?

She tries to remember what was said. Radcliffe certainly referred to the source of the doctor’s distress as though it were an animal, but Lord Malick very distinctly said “he.” Of course it’s possible she’s misremembering because she was distracted by the doctor’s last minute decision to kiss her goodbye.

It was hasty and absentminded, as though he only suddenly remembered he had a fiancee at all. She supposes she should be glad he did remember eventually, but as she was left alone in an empty dining room only seconds later, she can’t say she’s pleased at being handled so carelessly.

Her fingers twist in the laces, searching for some give with which to loosen the knot. The tightness in her chest increases.

She does not, she has learned, appreciate being picked up and discarded like a child’s toy and if this is to be her life…

“Ophelia!” she calls again. The pressure is becoming painful. She’s having some real difficulty drawing breath into her lungs. “ _Oph_ -” She sighs in a wholly unladylike way as the pressure finally eases. “Thank you.”

Her arms drop limply to her sides while Ophelia frees her. Her shoulders thank her as much as her rib cage and for a few moments she simply loses herself in the sensation of relief. Even her anger seems suddenly absent, as though it was a bird trapped in her chest which has now been freed.

“Thank you,” she says again as her dress slides to the floor. She drops her head back to stare at the dimly lit ceiling. She is not a toy or a machine, she is a woman, and absent all the stiff layers of clothing she truly feels like one for the first time in … in who knows how long.

A sharp warmth prickles at her eyes. Is this all there will be? Stolen moments of personhood in between long stretches of artifice?

“I begin to understand what your namesake was thinking,” she murmurs softly. Not that she would ever dare such a thing, but she understands better now than she did when she was young and saw the play performed for the first time.

Soft skin touches her bare back, fingers brushing down her spine. They are not a woman’s.

In a heartbeat she is away, her dress drawn up and held to her chest like a shield. There is a man in the shadows of her room.

“I’m sorry,” he says, the words round and uneven as though he’s trapped between accents. “I’m sorry, I only … you were distressed and you are…” She can better feel than see his eyes moving over her, but despite her predicament, she feels far less exposed beneath his gaze than she did when she entered the dining room earlier in the evening and found herself the center of attention. “I do not have much experience with beauty.”

The words are said with such simplicity, no sorrow or self-pity, as plainly as if she were to say her own name, that they still the scream rising in her throat.

Only a moment later does she realize it’s just as well. With the men gone, there are only the servants. Ophelia would hear, surely (assuming she is there at all, who knows what this man has done?), but Dr. Fitz—in what she privately considers to be one of the more promising aspects of his character—employs largely crippled servants. As kind an act of charity as it is, however, with most of the house servants deaf or dumb or both, her screams would do little good.

Which leaves her at the mercy of this man who has secreted himself into her bedchamber, who has undressed her and seen her in such a vulnerable state.

She lifts her chin proudly. She is still a noble lady and will comport herself as such. “You’ve caused quite an uproar,” she says, attempting at the cold, dismissive voice Lady Garner has mastered for use on impertinent young suitors.

She still cannot see him clearly—even in the dim light, he’s chosen the darkest of shadows to ensconce himself in—but she can see the firelight reflecting in his eyes, see the two tiny pinpricks tip to one side.

“Have I?” he asks. “You don’t appear overwrought.”

She tightens her grip on her dress and resists the urge to back away farther. Pride is her primary reason, but practicality is a close second. Where she stands now, she can either back towards the bed or the window and both will take her farther from the door. She’ll stay where she is.

“You’re the one the men have gone off hunting, aren’t you?”

“How can you be sure?”

“My fiance abandons his own dinner party to chase an interloper of some sort and as soon as his horse has disappeared into the night, a stranger is found lurking in my bedroom? It would be quite a coincidence.”

For long seconds the man only stares, his focus an itch across her skin. She fists her hand in the fabric covering her hip. If she fidgets, she’s likely to give him even more of a show than she already has.

Finally he asks, “Fiance?”

“I am to marry Dr. Leopold Fitz.” Soon, she adds silently as if that will make it so. The promise that they would be wed here was necessary to her agreement to come here, but now that he has secured her presence, the subject seems to have been forgotten.

“Don’t.”

For a moment she thinks she’s given some sign of wanting to run, but then she realizes this man thinks to dissuade her from marrying the man she is promised to. For some reason the audacity of such a thing is more galling than his mere presence here.

“You will forgive me if I don’t conform my life to the wishes of criminals.”

“I’m a criminal?” he asks, sounding amused.

She keeps hold of the skirt’s edge, holding it out to one side in a gesture meant to take in the obvious. “You’re here.”

“Perhaps I was invited.”

Her blood runs hot. “Into my room?” she demands, her voice edging on shrill. It is outrageous, utterly absurd. And yet, given the type of company her fiance keeps, there is a part of her which wonders…

But no, that would not be at all in keeping with his feelings for her.

“Into this house. Your … fiance-” he says the word as though it physically pains him- “is not who you imagine him to be.”

She’s feeling a chill. She would like to at least sit, have something at her back other than air and bare skin, but settles for pulling the skirt more tightly to her legs. She wants to ask who this man supposes she thinks Dr. Fitz to be, but again pride holds her back. “Who is he then?”

“A monster.”

She can’t help herself, he says it so plainly, so _seriously_ that she has to laugh. But he doesn’t join her and she quickly sobers. “Forgive me,” she says with all the sarcasm she can muster, “but how can you be so sure? Do you have much experience with monsters?”

She hears the wicked smile in his voice when he answers. “As they say, it takes one to know one.”

Her spine stiffens. “You aren’t exactly endearing yourself to me,.”

Those twin pinpricks of light tip to the other side. “Should I be?”

“Well you are trying to convince me not to marry my fiance.” She would have thought that necessitated some level of trust.

Again he stares and she wonders now how she ever could have thought it was Ophelia behind her. The sheer weight of his attention should have given him away.

“You were not invited,” she says firmly, deciding it would be better to return to topics other than monsters or her impending nuptials.

“Not as such, no,” he says with some bitterness. “Do you know what the doctor studies currently?”

“Physiology.” It’s how they met. He’s wildly intelligent but his area of expertise is mechanics. His attempts at quickly mastering what physicians spend years studying brought him to the same lecture she was attending. She smiles to herself, remembering how his face turned red when she corrected his assumptions—she doesn’t blame him for them, a human body is far different from any of his machines and it’s hardly his fault he failed to account for the unexpected which so often occurs when flesh and blood are involved—but her pleasure swiftly dies as she remembers what followed that brief encounter.

The intruder must see her feelings on her face, for he waits until she’s composed herself to say, “A very specific type. My people’s.”

Without meaning to, she takes a step forward, spurred by curiosity. She can’t imagine what would make “his people” worthy of such concentrated study. Not unless he has a second head or a tail.

Despite the preposterous nature of such things, she finds her eyes narrowing on the shadows, searching for a phantom limb.

“He hurts them, cuts them open while they still live. Here, in this very house.”

“No,” she says. Several times, she couldn’t say how many. Dr. Fitz is not a _good_ man—she resigned herself to that long ago—but surely he could not be so cruel. Look at how he treats his-

Her thoughts do not stop, they travel on with her an unwilling passenger following that road to its inevitable conclusion. Her body has the sense to move, to sit itself on the edge of the bed before she can lose all control of herself.

“My lady?” the intruder asks.

Dimly she thinks that she likes the way his voice sounds now, the emotion in it warms her when otherwise she might freeze solid.

“The servants,” she says, her voice hollow. “I thought he was being kind.”

“What do you mean?”

“Servants who cannot hear or speak.” She looks into the shadows, finds the light in his eyes. “So they cannot hear the screams nor tell anyone what they’ve seen.”

She should have known. She should have realized. She’s always thought herself so smart, so much more intelligent than anyone else in the room, but it turns out she’s the greatest fool of them all.

“This is not your fault,” the intruder says. “He has fooled many people.”

She swallows down her hurt, focusing on more important matters. “You’re here to rescue your people, any that are still alive.”

“Among other things.”

She should ask what those things are, but there is a weight to his words she doesn’t dare examine. “In the four nights I’ve been here, I have yet to hear any screams or cries of distress.”

“There are some yet alive.” He sounds so sure. Perhaps she should try harder to soften the blow which is surely coming, but she remembers the way he spoke of beauty and cannot bear to be the one who dashes his hopes.

“His lab is in the east wing,” she says, “but I believe he does most of his experiments underground.” She spoke of removing the bars from the basement windows at that end of the property, as they are terribly unseemly, and was immediately denied.

“Thank you,” he says and, after a moment’s hesitation, steps towards the door to her dressing room.

“Did you hurt Ophelia?” she asks.

He stills. “No. I am adept at avoiding interactions with people.”

But he did not avoid her.

He needs to go, see if he might find his people before the men realize their quarry is behind rather than ahead of them. But she finds she needs to know.

“Why does he study you? What makes you unique?”

A slow breath escapes him. “It does not matter.”

She feels a smile tug at her lips. She’s often encountered the same answer when posing questions to more knowledgeable individuals who do not feel a lady needs to know such things. “That doesn’t stop me wanting to know.”

He turns to face her again and she cannot help but draw in a breath. Something has changed, something she doesn’t understand at all, and the odd familiarity that settled over their conversation has evaporated, replaced by her earlier fear.

“The trouble,” he says, “is that once you know a thing you cannot unknow it.”

She forces her spine to straighten. “I’m not afraid of knowledge.”

“You should be.”

His cold pronouncement is followed by silence and she realizes he’s waiting for her to ask again, to make the decision one way or the other whether she truly wants to understand what so intrigues Dr. Fitz about these people. Fear urges her to let him go, to leave the question unanswered, but she doubts Dr. Fitz will ever willingly share his research with her, leaving this her one and only chance of discovering the truth for herself.

“I’m not,” she says firmly.

Again he hesitates, but this time he steps forward into the light from the fireplace.

It’s a good thing she sat upon the bed, for when she sees his face—not a man’s face at all, but something utterly inhuman—the room tilts wildly around her and, to her eternal shame, she faints dead away.

 


End file.
